Ето и произведенията на останалите участници, които се включиха в конкурса към проекта. Темата за есе беше „Пътуване във времето”.

Iliyana Stoykova       XII-a class

TIME TRAVELLING          I had never expected I could see the future. But one day I had been given that chance. It all began last week when I was looking for some books in an old cupboard at my grandmother’s house. I found a vintage pocket watch. It was very beautiful. There was a note with it: 

“This clock is not ordinary. It travels in time. It can be used only once. Use it wisely.” 

I thought it was some sort of a joke and I pressed a random button. Suddenly, I ended up in another house. I was scared but excited. There was really something special with that clock. I looked around and found photos of me through the years. When I saw the calendar I realized I was 50 years in the future. This was awesome! I went for a walk to see the future world. I bought a newspaper to read something interesting and went into a café. I was shocked when my order was taken by a robot. A real talking robot! Apparently, there weren’t human waiters any more. I opened the newspaper and the front page was saying: “The Moonwalkers want cheaper ticket prices.” Moonwalkers! Another shock. There were people living on the Moon. And they were called Moonwalkers. How clever! This was too much for me. But I guess one thing didn’t change – we always complain about the money. This will never change. After I paid the bill / I took some cash from the house – taking money from yourself is not stealing, right?/ I went out for a walk. The people I saw on my way weren’t using their phones. They had little earphones in their ears as a replacement. 

At least one thing for sure hadn’t changed – fashion. As always fashion is repeating itself. It looks like neon colours are on top again. 

After this very odd and fascinating day I thought it was time for me to go home. I pressed the button of the clock and at the very same second I was back in my house. How good it is to be in my time. With my big phone and people leaving on the Earth. I am not ready for this future. It’s too far. Everything will come in time. But I’ll always remember this beautiful day in which I travelled in time.

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Dian Simeonov             XII- a class  

TIME TRAVELLING 

 The year is 2062. In the central park of the city a boy and a girl are sitting on a bench. They are talking very quietly. Almost whispering. They are in love.  I still don’t know how he came to me, but now this doesn’t matter. This is what happened:  I woke up in the middle of the night. Something woke me up. I ran to the place where the noises were coming from. I saw a boy. He was all wet. When he saw me, he grabbed me and said: 

“Where am I?” 

 “You are in my house! But who are you?!?” 

And then we talked. We talked for hours. I admit by the time ha was telling me the story I didn’t believe a word he was saying. I asked him how he came. 

 “I was going home when a cold wind blew. It started raining. I wanted to find a place to hide so I started running. From behind me I heard the sound of a horn. A car almost hit me but at the last moment I jumped aside to the sidewalk. I felt I was falling like never before. This falling brought me here.” 

 After a very long conversation he convinced me that he was from the future. I had a friend who could help us. After this long night came the even longer day. My curiosity was leading me. I was doing the impossible to find my answers. After hearing the story the professor said we were crazy. I went to look for help somewhere else. I walked in the elevator. As a joke, maybe, I pressed 20, 6, 2. The elevator started falling. But this feeling I had never felt. I was like I had just woken up. The doors opened and I was in the 2062. I saw a very strange old man lying next to the doors. I couldn’t believe this! I skipped 50 years! But my last night guest was trapped in the 2012. I looked for the central park. As I was walking I suddenly stopped. I couldn’t believe my eyes! My friend from the future was right in front of me. But he was not alone. He was with a girl and they were sitting on a bench. They couldn’t see me but I saw them. They were so close from one another that their talk was more like a whisper. 

 After a while the boy kissed the girl and went somewhere. I followed him. I knew what was coming but I couldn’t warn him. I couldn’t speak at all. A storm was coming. Heavy drops of rain were falling all over me. I heard a sound of a horn. There was a car that almost hit him. He jumped aside to the sidewalk. But he never fell. He was in my time and I am in his. But I have to get back! Yes, I am going to the elevator.  

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Nikolina Ganeva               XII-a class

2062 – Things didn’t turn out so well

        As soon as we landed I got off the car, slammed the door and started walking towards this little pub called “At Crazy Shrimp’s”.      “Come on, Ivana, stop sulking! Actually, you want to drive in this desert.” Shax was screaming but I did not respond. “It had to be done! Cars with actual tires are over! They have been for the longest time now! This one is much better and way faster!”       “It is stolen!” Facing him, I shouted back releasing all of my anger. “What are we going to do if they report us?”        “Yeah, right!” he chuckled. “And who is going to pay attention to them? They are the lower class, nobody, Ivana, like us! This is not Tokyo, this is Area 301! We can get away by stealing from our own kind…” His expression was ridiculous, a mixture of irony and carelessness.         I simply sighed and continued walking. He was absolutely right. The Public Order and Protection Units work for the people who hire and pay them. Owning a unit means you have a shield, you are somebody, because masked men in scary black uniforms surround you. Shax used to be one of those personal soldiers before I met him four years ago. “You are not allowed to speak, you can only take off your mask when you go to sleep and you do whatever they tell you to; if they order you to shoot somebody, you have to. If you refuse, someone else from the unit does it, while you are getting beaten by the rest’, he explained to me once. Shax ran away after the owner of the unit ordered one of their comrades to shoot his older brother… and he did it.

          I looked up. Rainy clouds were starting to gather in the gloomy sky. Area 301 really was an ugly desert, only from time to time it would pour down. This air-polluted lonely place used to be Ukraine thirty years ago.          It all began when the leftovers of world peace disappeared somewhere around the year of 2025. Hostility and antagonism took over the strongest of the world and made them turn against each other, starting a war of greed, wrath and insanity, like no other previously seen.           Unexpected. Terrifying. Destructive.           Of course, the ones in charge of it all gave orders safely sitting behind their desks, while the rest of the human population carried the heavy weight of war on their shoulders. Soldiers, sending messages of hatred to the enemy; men, women and children crying, friends losing their lives and friends avenging them, countries disappearing. An endless cycle of destruction and death. And all the world could ever do was watch helplessly as betrayals and explosions tore words spoken in vows.            Eventually it all became so absurd that nobody could tell who had thrown the first grenade. The truth had drowned in a sea of lost lives and nobody dared to guess what it even was because it could have been too devastating.            Power. Profit. Were they too fed up with sharing those? Was all this horror over the gluttony of a few men?            In the end, those at power withdrew to lick their wounds and glue back their broken prides. There was no winner, they had all lost. They had managed to destroy the whole world and leave all maps blank, turn it into an empty miserable landscape dressed it dust. The world did the only thing-it could collapse on itself.             Nowadays you do not need a passport, since countries do not exist, therefore neither do borders. Only a few major cities managed to survive: Brussels, Paris, London, Perth, New York, Los Angelis and, of course, the capital of the world – Tokyo. Everything else is now in ruins. People live in those ruins and in them they dream of the past, that time when the sky was baby blue, a green field was not a miracle, there were holidays and dogs did not eat dogs.             A buzz of hundreds of voices took over the air around us as we and Shax entered “At Crazy Shrimp’s”. As usual, it was another busy day at this pub, even if it was situated in the middle of nowhere. Some of the people there were just travelers who had stopped by for a cheap meal, others had familiar faces, but all of them were from the lower class, just like us.             “Ah! Shax! Ivana! Come you two, I have not seen you both around here for ages!” A loud deep voice spotted us in the crowd, making some of the visitors look behind their shoulders to see who it was addressing. The tall, muscular, dark-skinned man behind the bar was smiling at us. Half of his face was consumed by what seemed like a shiny metal mask where flesh once used to be. His left eye was a little red round screen. His left arm – an android one. That man, whose size made the people hear him seem tiny, was Shrimp.             “Hello, Shrimp! How’s your vision this time?” Shax asked putting afriendly smile on his face as we sat at the bar.             “Dandy! It is still a bit greenish but what can I say, I may have the android arm, but I am no android doctor,” he replied laughingly and suddenly his hand turned into a big knife he used to cut off the head of some fish he was about to cook. While he was

doing that, another hand came out from his shoulder, poured us some drinks and placed them in front of us. “For my favourite love birds,” Shrimp winked at us but I simply rolled my eyes and Shax looked at the opposite direction. “You know…” She decided to change the topic of this conversation. “I think Tokyo is playing with fire by using those androids to just about anything. Those things will develop a mind of their own, like children, they will learn from their parents, their creators – the higher class. They will start to desire power.” The tone of his voice was as if he was simply telling a joke. “The men from the units will also lose their jobs if this continues. What if they cause a riot?”             “That would be fun to watch.” Shax grinned. “But I honestly do not think they would be able to last a day before their rich once-upon-a-time owners destroy them.”             “Do not underestimate the human kind, my friend.” Shrimp’s words were a friendly reminder, but coming fro a man who was partly an android himself it sounded stupid. “We are not talking about a small group of people. There are thousands of them, you would know. If you think about it, the higher class are doomed without their units, unless they really have that many androids. The tables might be shifting again.”             “And it would be because of the same people… Again “, I mumbled. You think the only ones who would suffer if something happens in Tokyo would be the higher class? It would spread like a disease, just as the war did. The last thing we need is to become slaves of those fools’ creations. If the story repeats itself, there won’t be anybody left to walk on this planet for sure.”            “That is probably what the planet wants,” Shrimp laughed. “I can see it. The rebuilt project will fall.”            His words got me thinking and I stopped following the conversation, drifting into my own thoughts. After the war ended, the population of Earth had been cut into mote than half of its original size, continuing to decrease rapidly to this day as a result of starvation and fear. The rich realized they would need somebody to take care of their needs: to cure them when they get sick, to build that new thing they want. Therefore, they came up with the rebuilt project, which consisted of them selecting a few people who would breed, then give their children to underground school under Australia. In those schools they would be raised together, creating no emotional ties. They would be monitored all the time, educated and tested constantly. The ones that show potential and progress are sent to Tokyo or some of the other major cities at around the age of sixteen and become scientists, doctors and other high level positions. However, the ones that do not reach high results are escorted to the middle of a random area… and abandoned there, without any food or water.             I was one of those that did not pass…             Shax saved my life when he found me somewhere in what was left in India. Ever since that day I have known he is my other half and I am his. We survive, together, living week by week. One day we are here, the next we are gone. He is a good and gentle person, hidden behind his black eyes. I know when I am around him I am safe. He knows I would always be there to nag and kick him when he does something bad. And in this world that is enough for us to love each other, even if we argue a lot. Our life is not happy and not easy, but somehow we manage to survive in this darkness. Compared to most people we are lucky. We are the lower class.

             Your choices at the time doomed us, your kids. As the ones at power damn the world you simply stare.             It is your fault, too…

 

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Dimcho Yordanov             XI-a class

MY FUTURE DREAMS

                   You come into the dining room of the future world, open the door and…                   At first you see a wonderful table with comfortable chairs. The school canteen prepares very tasty food and you mustn’t pay for it. There is only new furniture in the classroom - new desks, tables, cabinets, etc. The students won’t use any books. They will write in their laptops. They will write fast. The students will download their lessons from the Internet. The teachers will write their marks in a server on the Internet to allow the parents to see their children’s marks. The students will be able to watch what their teachers are writing on the Internet, using a special program. If the teachers want to check their “notebooks”, they can do it with one click.                   It would be great if you studied at this school, wouldn’t it?

                                                                             

 

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Atanas Dimitrov & Daniela Ovcharova             XIIa class

TIME TRAVELLING

 The old man Morty was always a loner … A bully at school, a vicious shark at work, he would always trample over anyone to achieve his selfish quest for money and power … and where did they get him? At the age of 70 he had already lost everything: his late father’s company had bankrupted after a failed merger, his beautiful apartament had been mortgaged by the bank, his money spent on gambling  and alcohol, even the woman he never loved, but married out of convenience, ran away with the little he had left. Now the powerful business shark was nothing – an invisible shadow living on the streets with no home, no friends and no future. Now the man who used to sell his overpriced mattresses had no bed of his own.

 That November night was the coldest Morty could remember. He had just lost his only trench coat in a street bet and the grueling winds were beating his bare back. Just when he thought things couldn’t get any worse, it started raining, as if Nature itself was punishing him for his sins. He tried to use his arms to cover his head, but alas, he still felt as if the rain was pouring through his bones. He ran as fast as he could, his drilled shoes filled with water. In the distance Morty saw a little bridge, connecting the main city to Hope’s Reach island beyond the sea. “More water … great”, he thought, but at least now he had a shelter, a place to hide from the weather that was chasing him like a reaper. Morty was soaking wet, his little box of matches was ruined, he had no towel, no blanket, just a dirty yesterday’s paper that was lying on the sand beside him. He crouched and leaned his back against the bridge and tried to cover himself with the newspaper to find at least a bit of warmth. He looked around in the garbage he was sleeping in and saw a broken mirror. Morty immediately averted his eyes from his reflection, he knew his heart would break if he saw that pathetic stranger in the mirror. He tried to fall asleep, but his head was full of thoughts and regrets… If only he didn’t abandon his highschool friend Justin, they hadn’t spoken in 52 years; If only he went out on a date with the beautiful girl, who lived across the street from him … he didn’t even know her name… If only…

 And then he fell asleep.

 Morty woke up in the morning, only to find out that everything was different. He was still under the bridge, but… He looked at the newspaper and he couldn’t believe his eyes – the date was 21,05,2012. 2012 ... 2012 Morty had returned 50 years into the past , how was this even possible!? He looked around, but he didn’t remember the beach like that, maybe because he didn’t come very often back then...

 Morty had no time to waste, he had to find out what was going on! The first thing he thought about doing, was to check his apartment, although he didn’t have any money for a taxi, and he didn’t know where his car was parked. He decided to walk. Until now he had not thought about how big the city was and now, how far his apartment was from the beach, he rarely walked on foot. Only now he noticed all the little things he had

missed. After 40 exhausting minutes Morty was in front of a huge building, completely coved in grass, on the last floor of which was his apartment, the place with the most beautiful view in the whole city. From there he could see everything, but not the sea .. He tried to call the elevator at least five times, but the doors would not open, so he went up the stairs.  Maybe now that he was given a second chance, he had to work harder. He energetically started climbing them, floor by floor, one after the other, he started to wonder why on Earth would someone buy an apartment that high. Out of breath and completely covered in swear, he was finally in front of his door and surprisingly, it wasn’t even locked! Everything was exactly like before, tiny and clean, it was as if the last 50 years had never happened. He went into the bathroom and finally looked himself in the mirror, but the pathetic old man wasn’t there. He saw his past self, the powerful businessman Mortimmor Schmidt, covered in dirt and sand, with a full grown beard and ripped clothes. He immediately went into the bath and after a long shower and even longer staying in front of the mirror, he could recognize himself … when he heard the alarm of his clock, it was 8:30 and he was already late for work, so he dressed in the first suit he could find, got inside his brand new Audi and sped away to the company building. Everything was just perfect, he couldn’t believe it, he went into his office and sat on his favorite chair, he missed all of it so much. His assistant came into the office and told him about his appointments for the day, including the fact that his high school friend Justin had a birthday today. Morty remembered this moment well. He remembered that last time he ignored it and how sorry he felt that he didn’t even sent him a birthday card. Morty decided, this time he would change the future, not everyone could get that kind of a chance, to travel 50 years back, this time he would make the things right. He sent him a birthday card, and added he would like to meet him after so many years. He looked at the clock and it was already 12, the time was mercilessly flying, and he had sent only one b-day card. Morty decided to go to the canteen for lunch and everyone was surprised to see him there, he had never ate at the canteen. The new boy from Maintenance department was sitting alone, he decided to make him company and to ask him what was wrong. After a long talk he could nearly convince him to tell him the truth. His son had a birthday that day, but he couldn’t afford to miss work. Morty didn’t hesitate at all when he told him to go, to leave now so he wouldn’t miss the party, the young man couldn’t believe, he thanked him 10 times. For the first time he was feeling good, he was even smiling. Then he remembered for another good thing he could do. He looked around and saw everybody having lunch and he thought about another good thing he could do for his employees. Morty stood at the table and asked everyone for their attention.  He announced that from this day forward, the workweek would be from Monday to Thursday only, meaning that the company weekends would be extended to 3 days! The excitement was immense and the warm feeling Morty felt in his chest was indescribable, he felt better than ever! Later that night he took the charming girl from across the street to dinner. He never really bothered to see how beautiful, smart and funny she was, just because she wasn’t his class. He thought about his past self, what an idiot he was. On his way home, he saw a beggar on the street and almost went past him, when he remembered the condition he was in just 24 hours ago, so he stopped and gave the man his coat and a 50$ bill. Back at home, Morty stood in front of the elevator, which was working now. He made a faint smile to himself and headed to the stairs. He went to bed, but he didn’t feel tired he wanted to

change a lot of things, to fix his mistakes. He closed his eyes  and promised to himself,since tomorrow he would be doing something good every day. Morty was so impatient about the next day.

 Suddenly Morty heard a quiet voice, almost like a whisper near him and thought someone had broken into his apartment. He opened his eyes only to find himself under the bridge once again. His heart sank. All those warm feelings were gone, his second chance was nothing, but a dream. He saw the back of a man standing near him, probably a jogger who had stopped to catch his breath doing his morning routine. Tears welled up in his eyes ... the only thing Morty managed to utter was: "Always try to change your life for better, while you still can, sir ... You never know what your future holds." Morty felt the benumbed cold of the morning wind ... he had no intention of fighting, since he had lost everything. He slowly closed his eyes and fell asleep again. Right there, under the bridge, he heard the vague screams for help of the jogger, everything else was lost in the silence...